Villarejo paid 1,000 euros a month to track calls

Source: El País

The summary reveals the method used by the commissioner to access confidential telephone data

«There the only solution, which I do not see easy, is to make a trace [of calls], to try with someone from Telefónica». The then acting commissioner José Villarejo on September 21, 2009, revealed Ignacio López del Hierro, husband of María Dolores de Cospedal, part of his illegal methods to access confidential information of the victims of his espionage. In this conversation, revealed Monday by Moncloa.com, the imprisoned policeman as head of the police plot dismantled in Operation Tandem ensured that with the traffic of calls and SMS messages between the brother of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and the businesswoman Marita Fernández Lado, owner of the detective agency Method 3, it was possible to know if both were «rolled up a lot or a bit» and thus use that information to charge against the then Minister of the Interior in full Gürtel case.

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The investigation of the National High Court provides numerous indications on how Villarejo collected these telephone data and his willingness to pay for them. In the separate piece Pintor -in which the works carried out by the retired policeman Juan Muñoz, husband of the journalist Ana Rosa Quintana- are investigated, the investigations have revealed that Villarejo used an agent of the fight against terrorism to consult in the police database Sidenpol and get the identity of the owners of a dozen phones, the first step to get to know who the owners were related to.

Another high-level investigator, Enrique García-Castaño, El Gordo, admitted in his statement as a defendant before the judge that he provided his partner with this information without a warrant because the superior of both had ordered it: «DAO [Deputy operative director, referring to Commissioner Eugenio Pino, number two of the National Police in the stage of Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz] told me, ‘you ask for the data you are giving them.’

It is, precisely, a recording made by Villarejo of a conversation with García-Castaño that has revealed the supposed attempts of both police to get the collaboration of new employees of telephone companies to track calls. «A thousand euritos, yes, pussy, it’s worth it and such, and it does not put a limit to us … or if not, so much for each joint [phone] that we ask, as you see», Villarejo is heard. The retired commissar later used this economic cost before his clients to justify his high rates: «The traces that we are doing of traffic of calls and the delicate things, uncle, the people play it and, in exchange, it is necessary to anoint them [.. .]. All this is worth pasta. »

A report from the prosecution points out that Villarejo presumed before his clients of having a computer «program» able to cross the data of the calls they had obtained and obtain new information. In fact, the reports that the commissioner elaborated on several of his victims collected this type of analysis. In a recording he also shows his zeal in the custody of these data: «I take, put, decrypt, encrypt the list of canutos [telephones] and destroy it if it is not necessary […] every month or month and peak a backup on a CD […]. That is my method that I have been doing for many years because it is my life «.

Another conversation also reveals the supposed interest of Villarejo to go further and, in addition to achieving the traffic of calls, illegally intercepting telephone conversations. In this recording, the commissioner García-Castaño admitted his «obsession» for getting with a «fucking machine to poke phones.»